I am a freelance writer with a focus on the Ballard neighborhood. I love connecting what is happening in the community with my own life. I was born to be at large.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..

Mother’s Day at Top Banana

Once I spent an early Mother’s Day at Top Banana venting about parenting to the owner Jimmy Wild. It was just the two of us. I was foolish enough back then to be disappointed because, not only had my daughter not made me a card, she was in a bad mood because she hadn’t made me a card, and was taking it out on me.

On that Mother’s Day, Jimmy’s question of “how’s your day going so far?” was all that I needed to start a rant. He kept sorting through pears and reshaping their stack even as we agreed that many days parenting seemed thankless, even heartbreaking. When I left with snap peas and strawberries, bananas and a pineapple chosen personally by Jimmy I felt calmer. We had swapped stories along with pears, and somehow recharged ourselves. That night just before bed Emily left a beautiful handmade card on my bedside table, designed so that when it opened it created a pop-up table set for two with a drawn vase of Lily of the Valley. She had been trying to work on it without my knowledge but I had stayed too close.

I always think of that Mother’s Day when I shop at Top Banana and perhaps it’s part of what drew me there this last Sunday. It was late afternoon and most of the Mother’s Day brunches and gatherings had already played out. I had seen very few of what I dub Mother’s Day sightings – the obvious bouquets of flowers, the combinations of three generations making their way to their reservation at Anthony’s…just one family walking together, the small children on bicycles, the dog in the stroller with the mother pushing.

At the Top Banana check-out the young woman commented on the weather; how she was glad that it had at least been sunny the day before for her sister’s wedding. I stopped thinking about my next errand and looked at the woman weighing my asparagus. “So your sister got married yesterday and here you are back at work while they’re on honeymoon.”

“They’re not on honeymoon,” she said, “I mean they stayed someplace last night but they’re saving up for a trip later.”

“Was it an outdoor wedding?” I asked her.

“No, it was just the photos were all outdoors. It’s nice it was sunny.”

“My sister had her reception outdoors,” I told her. “And the night before it was pouring. Absolutely pouring. She was hysterical.” I smiled to myself remembering hearing my sister’s foot falls, the crack of light as she opened the hall door and approached the bed where I was sleeping next to my husband, our two year-old daughter sleeping on a crib mattress by the window. How my sister knelt beside the bed, wailing, “what am I going to do?”

“But the next morning was perfect,” I told the checker. “Bright blue sky and those really puffy white clouds. They did their photos by a lighthouse and they looked fantastic.”

“It wasn’t too muddy?” she said.

“No,” I told her. “It was perfect.”

“What colors did you wear?” she asked.

“Yellow,” I said. “The bridesmaids wore yellow.” And it was as though I could see myself standing on the church altar in the yellow dress with the gauzy white tie in back, still the most expensive dress that I have ever owned. What returns with that memory is standing behind my sister and Walter as they were married on September 11th 1993 and knowing that my own husband was dying. Even as I watched them dance later to Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful Life” I was almost steely calm with the knowledge that my parents would only have two son-in-laws for a matter of weeks, if not days. It proved to be just three days.

“Do you live in Ballard?” I asked my checker.

“Shoreline,” she said. “But my sister just works at the espresso stand so we get to see each other a lot. It’s pretty fun.”

I pictured an espresso stand farther down on 15th and then it dawned on me that she meant Jumpin’ Jimmy’s Espresso a few feet away in the parking lot.

“Right there?” I said.

She smiled and nodded yes.

“She’s not working today, is she?

The young woman shook her head; she looked tired. No doubt her hooded sweatshirt was a far cry from what she had worn the day before at her sister’s wedding. “They opened presents this morning.”

I took my bags from her and nodded down at a box of tomato plants. “I’ll come back for those,” I told her. “Congratulations.”

She gave her biggest smile yet. “He’s my first brother,” she said.

“Congratulations,” I said again, and turned away before she could see me cry on Mother’s Day.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..